“You’re where?” she just barely heard him over the din around her.
She answered.
“What the fuck …” he spit out and stopped the sentence. “You say Jacob’s on his way?”
“That’s what I understand.”
“Where is this place?”
She gave him quick directions then listened while the phone went dead.
Rye stood at the doorway between the lounges eyeing her every moment. Had Jacob really told his friends to look out for her? Or was this just a bit of bad luck? Returning to Geoff’s side, she considered telling him the truth, but it was becoming apparent that her brief affair with the man was about over. His interests were taken up by the couple and a group of players that would be leaving for another club soon.
“You going with me?” he asked her.
She didn’t know whether she was better off with him or without. But getting past Rye was another thing. She had the feeling that he wouldn’t let her leave without a scene. That would get ugly and take some time. Jacob would be there when it was finally settled and she’d end up going home with the man that believed he owned her as his chattel.
Eden hated confrontations. She’d rather relent than allow herself the humiliation of a spectacle. Even if this was a club that thrived on such things, she wouldn’t put it past Jacob to punish her in front of the whole room. She could almost count on him to turn the place into a theatre of the bizarre at her expense. She wouldn’t have a shred of clothing on her body by the time she left, there’d be bruises on her ass, her make-up would be in shambles, and everyone around her would get a long, thorough look at her. They’d never forget the memorable moment and Eden Rose’s memorable face.
Eden spied Jacob the minute he walked through the door. Her radar was so tuned to him she might have spotted him a mile away. The dom conferred with Rye, the two talking without a glance her way. Rye’s smirk was positively elated as he spoke. Jacob, on the other hand, was grim—a sign that he had his vengeance planned. After a time, he gazed at her, expressionless and cool. It was a deadly kind of indifference that always preceded their most heated scenes. The distance between them was a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon, though that chasm meant nothing. What was important was that Jacob still controlled her so completely that she knew her days of mutiny were over. She’d be going home with him for good before the night was over. There’d be a smile on her face by morning.
Everything seemed written in stone, kissed with blood. The inevitability got inside her so she was almost ready to respond with a submissive’s typically heated groin and imagination. It could end well, she was forced to conclude. She’d always have her dark needs met with Jacob. And once living in his house again, she’d be swept back into his world. “Give in, give in, give in,” the desire spoke to her inner ears. She listened trying to be happy about the circumstance, wondering if it was simply fate that caused her to link up with Geoff and end up about to be captured again. It seemed too curious not to have been preordained as part of her living truth.
Dwelling on her thoughts she turned around, Geoff was nowhere to be found. By herself against the back wall, she leaned into the aging wood, feeling a splinter or two about to poke through her hands from the rough surface. Mesmerized again by the conversation between Jacob and Rye half a room away, she didn’t see Adam at her side, taking her arm in his hand. Her attorney had to shake her from her reverie.
“Eden, we’re leaving,” she finally heard his voice cut through her thoughts.
She stared at him for sometime, not saying a word, realizing that she was practically drunk and could hardly find the right thoughts or words to speak.
“He’s going to make a scene,” she managed to say, nodding in Jacob’s direction.
“I have it handled, you keep quiet,” he said. The steel in his voice gave her no room to argue. Certainly she had no will. As they walked through the throng of people toward the door, they passed by Jacob and Rye, stopping only momentarily for Adam to whisper something in Jacob’s ear. Eden couldn’t hear their words and after the brief exchange Adam backed off and continued leading her toward the exit.
“Go ahead, man. Have her,” she heard Jacob speak as she walked out with the attorney. “She will be back.”
Nothing more was said until they were well into the night.
The silence inside Adam’s car was deafening, filled with his rage and her remorse. She could hardly hold back her tears, but she did for him because he’d hate her whining. A simple, “I’m sorry” would never do. He’d find it trite and likely not believe her. The only good thing about the long drive to Sadie Holt’s apartment was that she quickly sobered. Though seeing clearly again, the reality she faced sober was looking even worse than it had been when she was half-drunk.
“It would be a lot easier on me if you’d let loose that anger,” she finally said. They were just a block from Sadie’s apartment.
“Is that what you want?” he wondered.
Oh, he sounded so impeccably calm though she knew he was pissed underneath his serene facade. She couldn’t reply. It would make no sense to him that being punished right now was the one true thing that might set her straight.
“You know, your boyfriend followed us out? He’ll know where we’re going.”
“He’s following us?”
“An older BMW?”
“That’s Jacob’s car,” she confirmed.
“Then I’ll spend the night with you,” he said. “And in the morning I’ll move you. That is unless you plan to go with him.”
“No, no please. I could have gone with him fifteen minutes ago,” she answered readily. “Certainly not now.”
He said no more until they arrived at Sadie’s apartment and were at last inside. Neither of them looked out to see if Jacob was still there. They didn’t have to. When Eden expected the attorney to blow his stack, he remained so calm it was almost eerie.
“I think you need some sleep.” He moved toward the hall closet looking for spare sheets to make the sofa into a bed. “We’ll handle things in the morning.”
Eden fidgeted a minute before following his suggestion. It was best to say what was on her mind before her night ended. Get the tough part over with, she thought, then maybe she’d sleep that night. “Adam?”
“Yes?” He turned back to her.
“I know this is not your thing,” she hedged only a moment and then quickly blurted out her desire, “but if you were to punish me for tonight, I’d feel so much better. Perhaps you would too.”
His eyes narrowed, but he certainly didn’t look surprised by the suggestion. “That’s your answer for this mess?” he wondered aloud.
“I think it’s a good place to start,” she replied, sounding very reasonable.
“Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen tonight,” he said. “I think I’d rather let you live with your lunacy a while longer. But rest assured, if I decide to punish you, you’ll not be disappointed. Now go to bed.”
There it was again, that intense shiver of thrilling fear as a dominant man took charge of her. She’d think of it all night, what Adam Cady might do that would pardon her for her crimes. Starting toward the bedroom she already felt a tiny bit purged. Though it was hardly enough, she’d settle for the small satisfaction. Suddenly turning back, she had to have a response to the nagging question, “Are you married?” she asked him.
“Married? What makes you think that?”
“The pictures on your desk … and maybe your attitude.”
“The picture on my desk is of my sister, Dana. And no, I’m not married. Other than you, I have no entanglements with women,” he answered. There was a bit of sarcasm but yet a trace of kindness in his voice. “Now go to bed,” he added, quickly replacing any kindness with his cool reserve.
Though summarily put in her place, she felt as if a thousand pounds of anxiety had been lifted from her.
***
At Adam Cady’s country house summer bloomed in fr
agrant colors and smelled of verdant greens and muted pastels. Trellises and arbors bore heavy vines that continued down an old white fence to where the summer porch stood in lazy repose against the backdrop of cool shade trees. Ivy climbing up the sides of his brick cottage looked as though it would sneak its way inside the house to capture the inhabitants and draw them into an air of decadence that a good summer’s heat raises in winter-parched loins. There were a thousand melodies in the songwriter’s mind, fragments of music swimming through her head with just the first glance at the place she’d call home until the specter of that other lover died away. With her next glance at this remote world, the words came in a flow so wild she was forced to grab pencil and paper and rush to pour them out before they disappeared into her mind’s no-man’s-land.
Eden thought she saw Adam smile when he watched her sudden inspiration require a quick fishing trip through her bag for something to write on. She said, “excuse me,” briskly and plopped into an Adirondak chair on the patio close to the house. She wrote until all the words were out of her head, then turned back to Adam and smiled sweetly.
“I’m sorry, this place just took my breath away. Like in magazines, it’s a little trippy.”
“Well, like it or not, it’s where you’re going to stay for a while,” Adam said. After having put her bags in the house while she was busy making music, he sat down in a chair across from her.
“Like it? Adam, I love it. But it’s hard to feel like me here.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m from the city. My life’s depended on those moods …”
“As in how?
“As in bums on the streets, wiseacre taxi drivers, rich bitch women in suits, and seedy diners …” she paused, “and S M clubs. This kind of reminds of what I tried to do with my apartment, for what that was worth.”
“I see the similarity,” he replied.
She looked a little sad knowing the apartment was permanently tainted—the stuff of Jacob would never leave it. Assuming she went back to the city, she’d probably redecorate. Something more like Sadie’s plainness would feel better. “Well, one good thing, I already have my first new song,” she held up the crumpled slip of paper in her hand. “That should say something.”
Adam smiled. “There’s an old spinet inside,” he said. “Badly out of tune, I’m afraid. But perhaps it will make do until you can be on your way.”
She didn’t like “on your way,” when she was thinking it wouldn’t be all that bad to live here forever.
“I do appreciate this, Adam,” she finally had the courage to say. When they awakened that morning Jacob was no where to be found. Adam had Mitch take her to the offices of a fellow attorney, then he picked her up himself and drove the sixty miles to this piece of nirvana. Not a word was said about the fiasco the night before. Though a discussion of it remained the first thought in Eden’s mind the entire day, Adam hadn’t said a word about it. She followed his lead and kept quiet. They rode away from the city discussing her song-writing and what works were in the hands of publishers and musicians, and the book she was starting to write about the nature of musical inspiration and its foundation in sexual energy—some middle of the night vision that was at the moment tucked away on a computer disk in her purse. She hadn’t dared show it to Jacob. Not only would he have laughed at her theories, he would have probably forbid her to work on it. When she wasn’t slaving over the piano, she was useless to him.
“I know you appreciate it, Eden,” Adam replied. “The only thing I require of you is that you ditch the black clothes.”
“Really?” She looked puzzled. “You don’t like how I dress?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied flatly.
“But, it’s all I have … I think,” she said, doing a mental inventory of what was in her suitcase.
“Well, then try some of the sun dresses in the closet in your bedroom. There should be something that will fit and we’ll go shopping on the weekend.”
“But someone else’s clothes?”
“I said nothing black,” he repeated. “At least not now when it’s almost July. You look like death in summer and I know you’re not. You’d be surprised how a little color will change your mood.
She took the order as it stood, a bonafide command she better not break.
The silence that followed turned awkward. Though the surroundings of Adam’s country home were as peaceful as a meadow of wildflowers, there remained what had brought them together in the first place, the violence in her sexual psyche … and Jacob … and S M clubs … and all that was so much a part of her real life. As pretty as this peaceful haven was, she knew it was impossible for her—as impossible as her fairy-tale apartment and living without her beloved darkness—perhaps as impossible as living without Jacob.
“I was wondering,” she moved cautiously to broach the ticklish subject, “if you’d thought more about last night?”
“In what way?” he asked.
“As in how I grossly violated my agreement with you running out to that dance club, then ending up in the last place I should be.”
“Sounds to me like you were setting yourself up for a fall,” he suggested.
“You think that?”
“I think you were restless and agitated waiting for Jacob to miraculously fall off the planet and out of your life. At the same time I think you were desperate to get back into what you love—all that diabolical darkness.”
“My, you’re sounding like a psychologist now,” she said. She was strangely impressed by his evaluation, and a little stunned.
“No. Just an observer of life and particularly women,” he remarked. “You’re not the first woman I’ve seen that does stupid things.”
“You sound as though you have lots of experience with women, but not one in your life now?”
“I’ve had many in my life, but no, not one now.”
“That’s too bad. You’d look good with a woman at your side, one you’d command well.” She smiled. “But then I guess I look at all men as though they were potential dominants to my submissiveness. It’s probably a bad habit, but I have such an imagination I can hardly stop myself.” She smiled awkwardly and bit her lip. Adam leaned forward in his chair, eyeing her as though he had something to say, but he made no comment until she prompted him again. That was a particularly difficult thing for her to live with; Jacob always jumped right in and told her everything she needed to know. With Adam, she had to get over her fears and ask what he was thinking. “You thought I was anxious and desperate …” she began. Those words hit so close to home. “I feel as though I’ve lost half myself. Maybe that’s why last night I was almost seduced back to him. I know I would have given up completely if you hadn’t arrived. What’s worse is that Jacob knows that. He knows me so well, all my moods and failings, the thousand weaknesses I try to fend off. I feel so powerless in front of him.”
“But you don’t want him anymore?”
She couldn’t reply right away knowing that an out and out denial of Jacob wouldn’t really be the truth, as much as she wanted it to be. Adam was far too smart to believe that line again. “I have to build a life without him. Find a way to meet the needs in me that scream so loudly that I do stupid things like throwing caution away … like last night. I’m not sure how to accomplish it. But perhaps this … being away from Jacob and the city and all the memories will be enough to get me started. Being submissive, the sex—the sexual part—I’m sure, in time, that will all return to me.” She drifted a little. For a moment staring toward a planter of flowers she watched a fat black and yellow stripped bumble bee gather pollen from a flower’s center. The flower blue, the two elements of nature looked like sun and sky together. She could feel another song lurking somewhere inside—a beautiful metaphor about beauty and pain, how they tripped lightly through life hand in hand like lovers. She looked up to see those intense Adam Cady eyes still fixed on her. He was ready to talk.
“Tell me, Eden, what is it that you need do
ne to you?” he said. “Perhaps I can accommodate your need.”
She looked at his sincere expression with degree of compassion. Why was he was doing this for her? she wondered.
“It’s not as easy as that,” she said. She closed her eyes. There was no way this uninitiated man would understand. Yet, she searched her brain for some words to tell him, some pictures to communicate with enough clarity so he would grasp the real meaning of who she was. She’d dealt with uninformed boyfriends in her past, all with laughable to disastrous consequences. Opening her eyes she spoke. “I think we should leave this at lawyer and client.”
“And risk you running off on me again?” he turned stern. “Answer my question, tell me what you need.”
“You want to know? You really want to know?” She was highly amused.
“Tell me, Eden, no bullshit.”
“Okay.” She sat up in her chair. “You really want the whole truth, I’ll tell you the whole truth.” She gulped as she mustered her courage, though she wasn’t amused anymore. She felt backed to a wall and angry. She had no idea where the anger was coming from. It wasn’t like her, but it was vivid, a churning in her stomach that seemed to have no end. “The whole truth is, Jacob beats my ass and he does it until I’m bruised. There are times when I bleed from a cutting cane or thin whip. He ties me with bonds and thrashes me until I’m screaming. He clamps my nipples and clit, sometimes puts clothespins all over me …. And when it isn’t Jacob taking care of me, and I can’t stand not having my masochistic side satisfied, I go to this femme dom—that is female dominatrix …” She paused.
“You don’t need to define your terms, just tell me,” Adam prompted her.
“I go to this femdom, Miss Angel. She chastises me, berates me like I’m nothing but shit. When she orders me, I bow at her feet naked and wait for the blows to begin. Sometimes, she punishes my ass with her leather whip, the thongs catching my ass crack if I’m not lucky. Though I like my ass crack snapped with leather so it stings. It’s a burn I adore somewhere special inside me. Sometimes she’s really cruel … while kneeling upright, I lean back and she punishes my breasts with a riding crop. Sometimes she flails on my buttocks with a fat leather strap while I’m bending over a stool. Other times I have her boot shoved to my head and listen to the sweet sounds of a dominant soul reprimand me for nothing but being myself. It makes no sense, but I love it. Love it to my core.…
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